In addition to installing the new antennas, the Expedition 10 crew also deployed a small satellite in what may be the ultimate Hail Mary pass.

After the Expedition 10 crew successfully connected the first three antennas, Sharipov returned to the Pirs docking compartment, to which he had lashed the small satellite NanoSputnik. Weighing just 11 pounds (five kilograms) and about one foot in length, the satellite carries a transmitter and is designed to test small spacecraft control and orientation systems over about 100 days in space.

'Off it goes,' Sharipov said as he threw the long nanosatellite into space at a velocity of about one meter (3.2 feet) per second. 'It's rotating a bit, but it should be okay.'

Sharipov tossed NanoSputnik into a retrograde orbit - opposite the direction of the space station's motion - at about 3:31 a.m. EST (0831 GMT) while Chiao photographed the in-space launch.

'Congratulations and huge thank you to you because our scientists are saying they are getting a signal from the satellite,' Russian flight controllers later told Sharipov."

This the method two private firms wanted to use I told of long ago in another thread last year. It was refused to them but now the method has been tested for a nanosat - which is a progress concerning the variety of use made of the ISS.

May a competing method to microsat launching rockets.

This method has been applied manual by a human - what would be the optimal equipment or technology to do it by an engine? Electromagnetic launch? According to the article the velocity at manual launch was 1 m/s = 3,6 km/h and the launch was retrograd. Conventional launch? Ballistic launch?

I have been looking for threads focussed on spaceports including orbital spaceports especially but didn't find them although I remeber having posted about that topic. Perhaps there should be initiated such a thread but the article I read a few moments ago fits very good into this thread.

In the initial post I was talking about a kind of launch of a vehicle from the ISS which could be the germ of the development of future orbital spaceports.

The article I found has been published under www.marssociety. de and is reporting that Griffin has pointed out that the ISS has been installed at the wrong inclination - 51.6° instead of 28.5°.

Griffin explicitly is quoted to have said, that that inclination is wrong because at that inclination the ISS can't be used as orbital spaceport for manned and unmanned projects (and missions I think) in the ecliptical plane. Obviously the causes are political ones (another example of bad impacts of governmentality on spaceflight ... ).

The article also explicitly quotes Sänger and von Braun who both have used on orbital spaceport for interplanetary missions as transit station from Earth-to-orbit-vehicles into orbit-to-planet-vehicles. The article say too that the reasons were the differences between the requirements for going from Earth to orbit on the one hand and for going from orbit to planets etc. on the other hand.

So technologies, techniques, methods, concepts and capacities to launch from orbital stations may be opportunities to simplify spaceflight and to reduce its costs.

What methods, technologies, concepts etc. can you think of and how would they work? Would it possible to attach or connect the orbital spaceport to a spacstation or a spacedock. What about connection instead of attaching? Or would it have to be stand alone?

I think the the ISS's orbit was chosen as a compromise to accomodate all the partners, particularly the Russians who did not have an equatorial launch site for Soyuz. I'm not sure that Soyuz could have made 28.5 degree inclination or if it could the payload would have been reduced significantly (please correct me if I am wrong here) and if the Russians had not participated it is unlikely that anything would have been built.

Given the current situation with the shuttle its just as well that Soyuz can reach the ISS or it would have probably burnt up on re-entry by now. Mind you some would say that would not have been a bad thing, but from my point of view I wish people would find ways to utilise it to further space exploration rather than moaning about its cost.

Using it as an assembly point for other craft might be a good idea but you would probably need a small space tug to move the vehicles into more beneficial orbits before sending them off to other planets, it might work for lunar exploration though. I believe the Russians are talking about using the ISS as a stepping stone for their proposed $100M tourist trips around the moon? Seems to me if tourists are willing to spend millions to go to the ISS then it would be a good idea to transport a Bigelow inflatable up and get Kliper flying so that more could do it at a lower cost, maybe Bigelow should talk to NASA about it.

With Greg Olsen in orbit on route to the ISS and reportedly a $20M lighter bank account can we expect the Russians to be charging NASA a similar amount for future seats aboard Soyuz, or possibly more because of the extended mission time?. Aside from transporting astronauts the Russians will also have to ship enough water, food and Oxygen to support a US crew member so $20M seems a reasonable price on the face of it. Still cheap compared to the cost of a shuttle launch.

I wonder if the Russians will increase the number of Soyuz launches if the US are paying for seats?

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Regarding the payloads to the ISS at the inclination of around 51° the article under www.marssociety.de has quoted Griffin to have said that eaxactly that inclination has reduced the payload capacity - of the Shuttle at least. In other words - the payload to the ISS would be larger if the inclination were aroung 28° I think, if that inclination would have been choosen ESA would have enabled Soyuz launches from Kourou earlier. In that case the lower inclination wouldn't have been no problem but an advantage for all partners. But it is supposed that there were politivcal reasons of the higher inclination.

By the way - Griffin has been quoted indirectly mainly by that article.

But back on topic - I took the ISS as an existing example only from where a kind of launch has been done already as described in the initial post. It seems to be Griffin who wwas considering the ISS to be a possible spaceport - may be that was his preference but he had no chance to direct the design to that direction and now takes the opportunity to point to the mistake and error as urgently as required to avopid repetition.

I am myself thinking of Bieglow's inflatbales too to get orbital spaceports. What's open is how such an inflatbale spaceport-station could or should be designed. Is it possible to make a spaceport of Nautilus? By attaching something? Docking enhancements?

Or would it have to be done differently? May it be that the spaceport will consist of very short gateways and transit tunnels etc. only and consist of booms etc. else only? May it moving at lower or higher orbit than a space station it would be assigned to? So that each meeting time between the two a transit from the station to the spaceport is possible only?

Regarding the payloads to the ISS at the inclination of around 51° the article under www.marssociety.de has quoted Griffin to have said that eaxactly that inclination has reduced the payload capacity - of the Shuttle at least. In other words - the payload to the ISS would be larger if the inclination were aroung 28° I think, if that inclination would have been choosen ESA would have enabled Soyuz launches from Kourou earlier. In that case the lower inclination wouldn't have been no problem but an advantage for all partners. But it is supposed that there were politivcal reasons of the higher inclination.

Now that Russia has the possibility of launching from Kourou it might be benificial to move the ISS to a better inclination but when it was originally conceived or construction first started Russia did not have plans to launch from Kourou so would have pushed for a higher inclination. I suspect that Russia would not have agreed to be involved if the orbit chosen had not been so accessable to them. With no Russian involvement there would have been less ties politically between them and ESA and so it would have been unlikely that an agreement to launch Soyuz from Kourou would have beeen arrived at so quickly.

As another point how much difference does it make that the ISS is not in an ideal orbit? Would it be better to move it, is that possible? What about having a bank of ion engines that use power from the ISS to slowly push it into a different orbit?

New ISS modules would have to be designed to use it as a spacecraft assembly yard. A storage area for parts would be good so that spares could be launched whenever there was an opportunity on visiting craft (if everything could be launched at once then why bother to assemble a craft in orbit?). What about using a modified shuttle external tank fitted with an airlock and large airtight hatch as a pressurised construction bay which would allow astronauts to work on craft without spacesuits?

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

I am tending to consider the international treaty about the ISS to be incomplete because it seems to not include agreements about launches of all partners by launch sites of all partners - ESA from Baikonur and Florida, NASA from Baukonur and Kourou, ROSKOSMOS from Kourou and Florida. In that case there wouldn't have been any reason to not use 28.5° inclination. But let's keep away that - ex cept the idea if the ISS could be moved to that lower inclination safely and at not too much costs.

Spacecraft assembly yard - might there be a misunderstanding? To me the article under www.marssociety.de sounds as if Griffin was speaking about a real spaceport but not about building vehicles. I understand the article as saying that an Earth-to-orbit-vehicle arrives at the spaceport, the crew leaves and the Earth-to-orbit-vehicle returns to the earthian surface. Next the crew at the staion enters a lunar or interplanetary vehicle which then leaves for the moon or another destination in space. May be there is no crew and the vehicle is unmanned.

Understood like that the lunar or interplanetary vehicle would never land on Earth. Putting together a vehicle would be atopic only if the vehicle would be a oneway-vehicle - what a manned vehicle isn't. So both should be considered here - the return to the Moon in mind as well as a manned Mars mission.

But the assembly yard in principle is the idea of a spacedock attached to the space station which would be a spaceport too...

About the question of the Russians and their use of the ISS for tourism I remeber having read under www.marssociety also that the Russians explicitly have regular space tourism in mind by their future projects - especially the Kliper. They want to do that business - would be in the sense of Prof. Collins by the way. Would mean governmental offered tourist trips into space. May mean a strong assistance for an orbital spaceport.

Would spaceport-like attachments have to be habitat-like or would they be transit-docks only?

Although different in nature a spaceport used as a terminus for astronauts travelling to the moon or elsewhere would have to have some vehicle repair facilities as the craft travelling beyond LEO would need attention from time to time. This is especially true of reusable craft that will need repairs, fuelling and component upgrades.

The ISS would not make a good spaceport without a lot of extra modules added for docking craft, habitat space for delayed flights and fuel storage but there is no reason why this could not happen in the future rather than allowing it to de-orbit and break up.

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

I mentioned the difference between a spaceport and a spacedock simply because of their special functionalities. I am wondering a little bit if the weight or the size of both of them put together to one object might result in problems but I still would it consider to be suficient if they were orbiting at similar orbits.

The spaceport Gririfn seems to have in mind would be designed for unmanned vehicles as well as for manned vehicles. This may mean different kinds of docking stations each of which would be placed in their own departments - what about Earth departure stages? They could be stored and refueld at the spaceport in their special department. This would enable to move capsules etc. from one stage to another - the drive could be separted and so on.

What designs and concepts are thinkable, possible, likely to be working and realistic?

I think it most likely to be built in LEO but it could be placed in GEO if a tehther were used that way a lot of the equipment could be transported up the tether and the station would act as a counterweight for a space elevator.

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

The article "Russian Spacecraft Fails to Boost ISS into Higher Orbit" ( www.space.com/missionlaunches/051019_ex ... boost.html )
says that the ISS has to be moved to an altitude 4 km higher. It seems to be required to enable the Progress cargo carrier to arrive at the ISS.

Is that required because of a lack of manoevering capabilities of the carrier only or would that required for each vehicle - regardlis of being able to manoever or not?

It looks as if there could be achieved economies and savings by more optimal technologies or/and capabilities which are available already.

My guess would be that they boost the station just before a progress launch so that they use all the propellant on the ship already docked and get the maximum boost from each ship.

This means that they haven't wasted energy in transporting fuel that is then allowed to burn up when the ship deorbits and that there is extra flexibility if the next ship is delayed. The ISS looses about 100m every day so they get an extra 10 days for every km of boost which means the next progress can be delayed by those 10 days without causing a problem.

Having a series of reboosts throughout the life of each progress also makes sense as it would help keep the ISS at more or less a constant orbit. If allowed to fall for to long a period a boost would have to be much longer and the premature shut down of the progress engine would present a bigger problem.

_________________A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

If I understand that correct the boost is required because of the naturally caused modifications of the orbit (gravitation of Himalaya etc. for example?) and is required regardless it there is an approaching vehicle or not.

This means that orbital spaceports, assembly yards etc. would require such boosts too and that they are scheduled as optimal as possible - including the economical aspects.

Looks as if there are circumstances possible which could change the optimalities so that it would be more optimal to give up LEO and go to LEO and then slightly approach GEO...